I joined a class yesterday that has changed my feminist lens forever, in one class! I had a moment where my eyes literally welled up because of the overwhelming power of this “Ah-ha!” moment; how could I have missed this for so long? Followed by a profound appreciation for having moved to a new place in my intellectual understanding of this crux of the work I do and life I live.
While I’ve studied institutionalized, structural racism pretty much since the inception of my sociological career that began in 10th grade while reading Jonathan Kozol’s, Amazing Grace (1995), I’d never had race as a relational construct laid out to me in the matter-of-fact, ubiquitous way Professor Karyn Loscocco presented it. “Race is organized in a hierarchy; white anchors the top, and black/African American/and American Indian, the bottom,” she said and drew a vertical rectangle on the board, drawing a line that distinguished the top space as “white” and the very bottom, “black,” with a majority of the space unallocated between the two.
As whites, we study down the race hierarchy, from our privileged point of reference; we use our unmarked cultural practices to understand people at the bottom (Loscocco), to understand disadvantage, discrimination, inequality. We attempt to understand disparities between races in education, incarceration, career advancement, from our interdisciplinary feminist or sociological lens, via family structure, class, gender, and yes, race. But as opposed to studying race per groups, we need to see that vertical rectangle; the problem IS the race hierarchy (Loscocco).
Professor Loscocco present a definition of racism that was nothing close to anything I had ever discussed or heard before: Racism is a structural system of white advantage. Her entire lecture challenges us, challenged me, to invert the way we’ve traditionally studied racism as a system of disadvantage, and instead, look at who’s at the top. Ask why the white guys graduate at higher rates rather than why the “racial other” doesn’t. What is it about white advantage that creates these hidden powers. We need to shift from viewing the problems experienced by people of color to looking at the advantage of whiteness (Loscocco).
Equally important to keep in mind is that it’s not just the people at the top that enforce the race hierarchy, it’s everyone. White guilt is the air we breath, it’s in the very fabric of every single US institution. Just as we breath in unknowingly, this white guilt, if you’re at the bottom, you breath in the stereotypes about you. Race hierarchy is reinforced and recreated invisibly, via stereotypes and socialization (Loscocco).
The conversation reminded me of our delicate discussion of globalization and colonizing agency, as several of my peers expressed a fear of discussing race in the classroom, for fear of offending and bringing undergraduates to tears. I shared with my 645 class the conclusion we came to: that you can’t be scared to offend someone, that it is deeply personal and people will get angry, be hurt, and most importantly, there will be times where you will be wrong. And all of that’s okay. Because to be silent, especially about race, out of fear of being called a racist, out of this white guilt we carry around unknowingly in our “Invisible Knapsacks” (Peggy McIntosh), is of the most severe injustice we can inflict on our field of work. This silence, in fact, is racism.
Michael’s in this class with me as well and I hope we can bring what we learn about race this semester from Professor Loscocco and our colleagues in that course to our 590 discussions and be sure to invert the uncomfortable silence regarding race into a thriving and continuous point of contention.
Notes
This blog was overwhelmingly pulled from my class notes taken from Karyn Loscocco’s lecture and our subsequent class discussion. I worked to cite her when paraphrasing her words and make a clear distinction between her analysis and my own.
Suggested readings that also influenced this work and are great for taking race out of our interdisciplinary minds and focusing on it as a structural variable are (also per Loscocco’s required readings for our course):
* Hurtado, Aida. (1989). “Relating to Privilege: Seduction and Rejection in the Subordination of White Women and Women of Color.” SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Vol 14, no. 4.
* Rothenberg, Paula. (2008). White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
Confessions of a Bleeding Heart 
This is a beautiful post! Anti-racist work is feminist work, and we cannot forget that (which ties into our need to be accountable when we practice feminism on a global level…it is about race as much as it is about geography). We could also think about what it means for our women’s studies program to be heavily dominated by white women, and how we can account for white privilege in our classroom spaces and in the work we do.
I have a very clear memory of the first time I saw Karyn in front of a classroom, and it was a magical moment. She has a transcendent effect – she will tell you that no one is ‘born’ a good teacher, but I don’t doubt that she has pedagogical skills most of us could only struggle for years to build and acquire. And her race work is transformative for all of her students – this is why we must carry a politicized race analysis into our own classrooms when we teach. I do believe that our job as whites, once we have come to understand the racial hierarchy and how white supremacy is embedded in the fabric of our institutions, is to transform other whites.
I agree with everything you stated in your post. It was a very stimulating class. I could not help but think during her lecture that many of the points she made about race could also be applied to gender. Their is definitely a gender hierarchy and we need to also study why men have privilege and the benefits of those privilege in addition to the oppression of women.
The reason I did not bring this up in class was due to Loscocco’s attempt for us to ignore intersectionality and only focus on racism while I am sure she uses intersectionality in her own work I thought it was an interesting to see her using a teaching method that had her try to get us to ignore intersectionality and only think about racism while all of the students in her class were “screaming” intersectionality at her.
It is a very interesting class and will encourage us to always think about race in our own research. As Megan points out we need to transform other whites in the same way it will be my job to transform other men.